


the bones of my spine

by PaxDuane



Series: ribs a roof for heartbeats [1]
Category: Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Established Relationship, Family, Force-Sensitive Clone Troopers (Star Wars), Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mandalorian Adoption (Star Wars), Mandalorian Culture (Star Wars), Mandalorian Purge Aftermath (Star Wars), Marriage Proposal, Minor Original Character(s), Old Clone Troopers (Star Wars), Recovery, Time Travel of a kind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-24 04:35:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30066756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaxDuane/pseuds/PaxDuane
Summary: It's been over fifty years since Kix has seen another clone, Mandalorians are thin on the ground, and the stars know he hates the Chancell--the Empero--Palpatine for that.Still, somewhere, heknowsthere's family. Until he finds them again, he'll build one of his own.
Relationships: CT-6116 | Kix & Alpha-Ø2 | Spar, Finn & CT-6116 | Kix, Sidon Ithano/CT-6116 | Kix, past-Mij Gilamar & CT-6116 | Kix, past-Mij Gilamar/Alpha-Ø2 | Spar
Series: ribs a roof for heartbeats [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2212041
Comments: 8
Kudos: 23
Collections: Well Gives Wives





	the bones of my spine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [svartalfheimr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/svartalfheimr/gifts).



> Title from the Kristin Hanna _Summer Island_ quote "As mothers and daughters, we are connected with one another. My mother is the bones of my spine, keeping me straight and true. She is my blood, making sure it runs rich and strong."
> 
> I felt it was a good quote for Spar and Kix.

When the pirates who found him in stasis had told him that there were no more clones, he’d felt like he’d been shot. But, after he agreed to guide them to the old Separatist bases, when he learned how long it had been since the war, he started to doubt that he was as alone as he’d assumed from what they knew, what they told him. And, that assumption, that almost-knowledge... Well he expected the 501st was all gone, but he hadn’t only been connected to them. He started by searching the records on Mandalore, of course, and was nearly as horrified as to know that most of the other clones were dead.

But he’d caught some lines of the diaspora that followed, and of some of it that had started before the Purge. It took months, but he eventually tracked down the Gilamar clan. Mij’bu, he had somewhat known, was dead. He’d died relatively old...and left behind a spouse and several children. No names, that he could find at first.

Then he and the crew were busy. They picked up a shiny—well, a wetback, if this had been the war, if Finn had been a clone—who just tumbled out of a whole mess with some new regime trying to rise up against the New Republic and needed some direction. Pirates hadn’t been his plan, of course, but they hadn’t really been Kix’s either.

“They grow on you,” he’d told Finn while patching him up from the scuffle that landed him in their care in the first place. “Like a fungus.” And, well, he always needed someone else to help run herd on these ones, and Finn needed to save up for a new ship.

Sidon had made such an offended noise.

Finn still hasn’t bought the new ship, no matter that he had plenty of money after the last haul. Kix and Sidon had decided to codify their tendency to fall into bed together.

And Kix had tracked down Mij’bu’s spouse.

“Para Gilamar,” he murmurs, looking at a picture of a stern looking older person, in their seventies with pure white hair. Long, like Tup had kept his, and...

Well, Para Gilamar had quite a few similarities to the glimpses he’d had of Jango Fett. And they have a distinctive, old scar in a thin line on their cheek.

“Relative?” Sidon assumes.

Finn pokes his head around to peer at the datapad.

Kix presses his lips together. “My buir—parent, I mean.”

Behind them, the others’ noise comes to a stop.

“You’re a clone, though,” one of the newer itinerants points out. Not meanly, not like some have said it.

“I was adopted by one of the trainers,” Kix explains. “Para Gilamar is their riduur—their spouse. And I knew them.”

Sidon draws his chin up from the datapad to look at him. “...well, then make a call or two.”

Kix quirks an eyebrow and kisses his striated hand. “Alright then.”

It’s nothing much, when his contact tracks down the commlink for the Gilamar clan leader’s home—not Para but one of their children. He sends it before they go off on one of their adventures, so he won’t check obsessively.

“CT-6116, baar’ur.”

They come back decently richer, split among the crew and several itinerants seen off with theirs, the others talking about a vacation.

“Hello ori’vod.”

He stares at the comm message, at the following offer to call and the time to sync up for on the planet the homestead—no longer Mandalorian in soil but always in creed—is located.

The call goes well, some things are ironed out, and an invitation is extended.

Kix goes out into the common area of the ship with his hands on his hips and points to Sidon and Finn. “How would you like to meet the family?” he asks.

Para Gilamar stands ramrod straight, all former commando. Still, they don’t quite look Kix in the eye, like they used to.

“If I could kill him again,” they murmur.

Kix ducks his forehead into Keldabe. “Su cuy, Spar’bu.”

“Su cuy, Kiki,” they return.

Spar shows off pictures. Them and Mij’bu starting the homestead, Kix’s siblings when they’re newborn to now, all sorts of things.

Sidon, when they’re in the bedroom they’ve taken, asks, “Do you hate you missed it?”

Kix looks at him, dressed down from his normal buccaneer attire. He’d admit he loves Sidon, no matter that it is not easy to love him. And he loves Finn, as a little brother who is already being dragged along in Spar’s wake. “I do. I wouldn’t give up searching for information about the chips, I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself. But I miss that I didn’t get to help build this place. I miss that I didn’t get to see my siblings grow up. I miss that I didn’t get to see my buir again before he died, and I miss that I haven’t been out here helping Par’bu.”

Sidon waits—knows he’s not done.

“I think I would like to think that if we’d been born closer together I would have been fascinated by the rogue of a pirate who nearly crashed into the homestead and needed tending to,” Kix adds, grinning.

“I do not crash into anything, let alone homesteads,” Sidon says with a scowl. Still, he tugs Kix to him and they lean on each other. “I think I would like to think that I’d have fallen in love with the handsome medic working a farm who had to tend me back to health, though.”

I wish it had gone different, I’m not glad it didn’t, but I think I would like to think we’d still have found each other.

Their normal refrain, but different.

“Finn seems to like it.”

Kix snorts. “Finn was raised in an environment not terribly different from Par’bu and I.”

Sidon frowns, still not entirely used to Par’bu being so close in original age to Kix.

“And so Par’bu has created an environment that makes up for that. I’m sure Mij’bu did too, but... Par’bu is the one who lived it, like me. I don’t know how my siblings reacted, when they were younger, but... Being in a place that is still structured but is warm, and kind, and gives you many options... Well, I know I like it.”

Sidon nods, obviously thinking through the attitudes and attentions of the ship and its crew. “Warm...”

Kix snickers. “Even space is warmer than Kamino, cyare.”

Par’bu peers through sunglasses at Sidon and Finn, who are trying to catch the family strill’s pups. Mainly because they’re intrigued by the animals, but also because Par’bu noticed that and set them to round them up for food.

Kix wipes down his hands. “What?”

“You have a cyare and a foundling.”

Kix stares at the two. “I suppose I do.”

“I would figure you were done with adventure.” Par’bu goes back to stripping and cleaning the slugthrower they dragged out of a closet. “But I suppose they’re not.”

“Some want to be rich.” He looks at them. “Some want family. And yes, I suppose they’re not done with adventure.”

“And you’re like your buir.”

“Which way do you mean?”

“You always have to take care of everyone, and remind them that they’re idiots.”

Kix snorts. “Reminding them that they’re idiots is necessary.”

“The most misanisthropic optimists I’ve ever known.” Par’bu is smiling, but there’s still grief there. “I’m glad you were found.”

Kix reaches over and pats their shoulder. “I am too.”

Par’bu’s mouth settles into a firm line. “Have you told them? About your mind?”

“When did you tell buir?”

They start to put the slugthrower back together. “I told Mij the day he proposed.”

There’s more, there, and Kix can almost taste it. Par’bu crying, in the throws of memories not their own, and Mij’bu’s hands on their arms, trying to pull them back.

Mouthed words, desperation.

Stars willing explanation.

Kix sighs. It’s distant, far more distant than anything Par’bu gets. It’s like reading a book about drowning instead of being drowned. “I’ll tell.”

Mij’bu eventually repainted his armor.

Kix stares at it, in the case that Par’bu pulled out to clean the closet it’s been stored in. They have their own armor and have given Kix a canny look that he’s not sure he’s willing to accept. But Mij’bu’s armor is still here, in a carved case with the Gilamar clan sigil. A Krayt dragon, mouth open around a spear. It never quite fit Mij’bu, but when you placed him inside the wider family you could see it.

Kix strokes the painted metal, traces the gold symbols—vengeance for Mandalore—on the black—justice—and the green and pink geometry.

Par’bu’s is all Fett, all blue and green and reds like blood in a river.

Mij’bu’s was always gold, before.

“He got his vengeance, then?” he asks.

Finn makes a questioning noise from where he’s holding cleaning supplies.

“Cut the man apart over a pleasant week,” Par’bu says. “I don’t feel sorry for him.”

“And then everything was falling apart around you.”

Par’bu smiles. “We’re Mandalorian—we rebuild. So what if our first planet is a rotten city, our second is a glassed desert? We’re still Mandalorian. Now get that out, I know you remember how to polish.”

“Was trooper armor based on Mandalorian armor?” Finn asks, testing the vambrace.

Par’bu and Sidon are on the porch, sipping something wildly alcoholic while they leave the teaching to Kix. They’re talking quietly, maybe, in their own way.

“It was,” Kix admits. “It’s morphed quite a bit since then, though. We made do.”

He has no idea what happened to his kit, a gift from Mij’bu and Bajir Fett for what the original plan for him had been, before the 501st. He’s not sure there’s a way anyone could have gotten it. It might have gone down with whatever ship he’d last been on.

“We’ll have to pick up some adjustments,” he says, taking Finn’s arm and inspecting it. “You’re too inclined to go carousing with Sidon and the crew.”

Sidon’s offended noise makes it to him from the porch.

He shoots him a look, shoving his smile down. “When you’re not coming back half alive or less, I’ll stop calling it carousing.”

He snickers at the grumpy silence that follows.

The house is in good repair, Kix’s kih’vode have seen to that. They have their own homes, their own families, at distance from the homestead.

“I think this will be yours, when I’m marching ahead,” Par’bu decides the morning they’re leaving. It won’t be for years, Kix suspects. No, if any of them will live to 120 it would be Spar. Chakaar.

Kix shoulders the bag he’s packed. Beskar’gam for him, a slugthrower, strill food for the just-weaned pup in Finn’s bag with his own beskar’gam—Mij’bu’s to be repainted soon enough. “Well, we’ll be back when we next let the others go credit crazy.”

Par’bu pats his face, pulls him into Keldabe for a few breaths, then kisses his cheeks. “It will be good. Next time we’ll have your kih’vode come more.”

Slowly getting him used to them, and they to him. He’s eldest, but he’s younger than all of them. He’s still a ways from catching up to his proper aging. “Alright.” He’ll continue to write back and forth to them. They’ll learn each other, like they should have already known, awkward as it might be.

As strong as ever, Par’bu sweeps Finn into a hug—Finn’s much closer in age to the other grandchildren--and drags a laugh out of him happier than Kix has heard yet.

Par’bu fixes Sidon with a look that has the pirate shrinking slightly. “And you don’t make my ad too disappointed. I’ll have to come by myself to teach you a lesson—he’s too soft-hearted to do more than scold.”

He hears the soft, aghast “soft-hearted?” and snickers.

“Ret’urcye mhi,” Par’bu and Kix say at once, then laugh.

They will. The stars saw fit to bring them back and they both have a good feeling they will not keep them apart so long again.

Kix is waiting, exasperated, when a black, blue, and purple painted Finn drags Sidon back to the ship from a firefight.

Reveth is snickering behind them, a new scar to impress girls already prepped for Kix to stitch up and slather with bacta.

Finn’s strill, Bangcorn, is on Kix’s back, giving them a dirty look of its own.

“Di’kut,” Kix snarls, dragging Sidon the rest of the way onto the ship and into the infirmary. “I’m going to marry you if you keep pulling this shit.”

There’s a pause.

“I could have sworn you said murder, but you didn’t,” Reveth gapes.

Quiggold, the only one besides Finn unhurt from the firefight, snickers. “I believe I’m owed some credits, Rev.”

Sidon shoves his mask up and kisses Kix, a surprise when his usual PDA is quiet touches.

“You’re going to get married?” Finn asks, taking off his buy’ce with a grin.

Kix presses his forehead against Sidon’s. “Damn, I guess so.”

Sidon’s grin is small, but Kix can feel the emotions behind it.

“We’re going to have to have the party at the homestead,” he warns. He’s not sure he wants Reveth near his sister—the two of them will be unstoppable.

“Why?” Sidon asks, already putting his mask back on properly. “Is it not enough to simply let them know?”

“Ba’buir said that you can perform the vows anywhere in the galaxy,” Finn adds.

“Yes,” Kix admits, “But if we don’t want armed visitors to the ship, likely out of hyperspace knowing my family, we’ll quickly have a party at the homestead.”

Sidon makes the little noise that Kix knows means he’s grimacing. “Yes, we will have to quickly have a party at the homestead.”

Kix snickers—the Gilamar clan knows well how to be loud, and they all like Sidon well enough and Sidon likes them, if mostly in small doses. No, he’s just as scared over what the combined crew and clan will blow up.

“I’ll let buir know.”


End file.
